Before leaving the USA we researched and read many blogs to see what this venture would cost us. We wanted to be prepared. It can be hard to gauge, but we started out with a goal of spending an average of $50 or less a day ($25 each). We set this goal based on a number of other nomadic backpackers’ blogs and what they spent. Admittedly, we are both very competitive and at times it was almost a game for us to try and beat this number.

Our actual spend was $13 each per day. That’s $4,775 a year per person.

So how can you travel for less than $5,000 a year?

Live like a local

We didn’t set out to travel the world in order to live in the little pieces of America in the countries that we visit, like El Poblado in Medellin, or Escazú in Costa Rica. We would have just stayed home in the USA. After all we do love America, we just wanted to see and experience more of the world. We wanted to partake of the lifestyle and food of each place we visit.

New Years Eve celebration with a wonderful local family in León, Nicaragua. Shown here is the “bull” with fireworks strapped to it that would chase us all down the street.

Food: Cook your own meals but avoid planning your meals too far ahead. Sounds counter intuitive, but we normally did not plan our meals before arriving at the grocery store. Instead we chose our meals based on what was available at the store for the best prices. Local grown food is often the best way to go, and normally the least expensive food on the shelf is what the locals also eat. Make sure to check the unit price. In Central America we found that the unit price on many items was often cheaper on the smaller packages. This works out great for backpacking as bulk items would have been a pain to carry.

The choice of grocery store also matters. Shop in Pali instead La Colonia. In Colombia we liked the D1 chain of grocery stores.

So fresh the cans were jumping. No.

When we did eat out we would look for the places where the locals hang out. Normally that is the best food and the best price. In some areas eating out was just as economical as cooking our own meals. When a huge meal is less than $2 and cooking that same meal would be a similar price we definitely took advantage of the break from cooking (or, to be more specific, Trin took a break from cooking).

Tamales

Water: We don’t drink water straight from the tap like the locals do, but neither do we buy bottled water. We have a small Sawyer water filter and it works great. Not only does it save us a lot of money, we’re also not filling the landfills with plastic bottles. We even use it on hikes to drink from a local stream. We did not have to carry as much water on our backs for the long, hot trek, and the water from the stream was cold.

Transportation: For the most part we travel overland using public transportation – the transportation that locals use, not the gringo busses and rarely ever take taxis. We have only taken two flights. Once between Panama City and Cartehena Colombia (because you can not cross overland on the darian gap. Our second flight was from Santa Marta to Medellin because the flight was cheaper than the bus!

We could have taken a flight to the Corn Islands, but the trek there overland, down a river, and over the sea was a great adventure. It was also much cheaper.

Rainstorm on the river during a rainstorm with passangers under a tarp

On a tiny boat from Big Corn to Little Corn Island

Little Corn Island

The cargo ship that took us back to mainland

Little Corn Island

Lodging: One of my favorite lodgings was a cinderblock home in Salento. It was typical of a local home. It was build for functionality, not luxury. I really enjoyed its simplicity and its push for me to continually reevaluate need. We were comfortable, had a hot shower (hot water is not a given) and privacy.

Airbnb: We used Airbnb (you can use this link for $40 off your first Airbnb stay) for about 35% of our nights. It is often recommended to make sure a home has good reviews, however quite a few times we took the risk of booking with new listings as they often offer a good introductory rate in order to get a few good reviews to get them going.

In several cases we found beautiful places that would normally be worth far more than we paid. So far almost all the hosts have been wonderful and we got to live with locals. Only once was the place so filthy and the owner so creepy that we cancelled our second night and moved on.

Home in the mountains of Costa Rica for only $10 a night

Home in the mountains of Costa Rica for only $10 a night

Home in the mountains of Costa Rica for only $10 a night

Other Lodging: We used booking.com a few times. Another 143 nights were through workaway, housesitting, or other volunteer lodging that ended up being free. In places like Nicaragua that are not really online yet we walked around each new town upon arrival and found a place.

Our lodging at a WorkAway in Costa Rica, complete with howler monkeys in the tree outside our door in the morning

You don’t need brand new

In the developed world it has become second nature to throw away broken or ripped items. In our quest for having new shiny items we fill landfills and spend much more money then we actually need to.

Be willing to fix your stuff. I patched one particular pair of pants over 10 times before finally giving in to the fact that they were done and I replaced them. Still, the old pair of pants was re-purposed into a headband, and pockets for another pair of pants lacking pockets.

After my knee surgery I needed a walking stick. Hiking sticks were not only hard to come by in Panama but the cheapest was over $50. I bought a broomstick for less than $3 and it works just fine. It’s what the locals do.

In Jinotega, Nicaragua, I replaced my worn out shoes with a pair of used Ecco sandals from a Ropa Americana, thrift stores selling used clothing from the USA. The sandals were in great shape and actually of better quality than what any brand new stores in Nicaragua had to offer.

Include down time

Since this is not a gap year for us but instead our new adopted lifestyle it is important to travel at a pace that is sustainable for years.

In Panama we had a couple of months of downtime. A major part of the reason for staying so long was I required surgery on my knee that I had injured on a volcano hike in Costa Rica. We found a beautiful hacienda through WorkAway where we stayed for free if we cooked meals for the rancher. Meals were included! Huge cost savings, a great place to recover, and join in at the cabalgata and parties.

In Colombia we took another break by House Sitting. We spent 3 weeks taking care of dogs and hiking the beautiful mountains surrounding the home. We watched the home while the owner was on vacation in exchange for free lodging. The hardest part of this homesit was saying goodbye to sweet little Lola. 😦

You don’t need an arranged tour or guide for everything

On a two week vacation that you have had little time for planning because you are busy at home working and taking care of all your other obligations it makes sense to arrange tours and guides. After all the point of short vacations is to relax and not have to do everything yourself.

With travel as a lifestyle take the time to plan your own treks. It also helps to have a handheld GPS. You can find GPS tracks on wikiloc.com. We did this on our trek up Telica Volcano in Nicaragua that would normally have cost us $120. We did it free and were able to go at our own pace. There is a lot of information online about many of the “places to go” and blogs are a great resource for how to do it yourself.

At the crater of Telica Volcano

Where we spent the $9.5K this past year

Spend Type

Yearly total for two $9,550

Daily average for two $26

Lodging

$3,230

$8.8

Food

$2,744

$7.5

Transportation

$1,925

$5.3

Entertainment & Other

$1,653

$4.5

How to live financially free so that you can travel the world?

Our “About Us” page talks a bit about how we saved in order to retire at the age 43, but ultimately it’s about choices. I recognize that we were blessed to be working in a free country that allowed us to make these choices and allowed us to become financially free.

Given that opportunity the choice is to sacrifice a luxury now to fund the ultimate dream later. It’s about spending money on what is most important to us. It’s about living below our means so that if an opportunity to move on comes along there is freedom to do so. It’s about not being so far in debt that you are not a slave to your job because you have to maintain a certain level of spend.

What would happen if all of America cancelled their cable service and put that money to something they truly desired? Cable is just an example- insert something you could give up for just a little more financial freedom. We truly don’t need as much as we think we do to live.

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5 thoughts on “How to Travel for a Year on Less Than $5,000”

It is very difficult to manage your travel expenses and but after reading your blog it seems so easy that you have managed a trips at your budget as your blog is inspirational for the one who is thinking to spend a almost one year to any particular city and hats off to you and it seems that it will not be difficult to live in a partcular city for a year.